NC Football Teams Raising Question: How Long Until Basketball Season?
By David Glenn
Just two years ago, the North Carolina football team accomplished several impressive feats.
Led by sensational quarterback Drake Maye, the Tar Heels carried a 9-1 record into mid-November and rose to No. 13 in the national rankings.
At the end of November, even though UNC had lost close games to Georgia Tech and NC State to finish the regular season at 9-3, Maye received the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year honor. Underlining the magnitude of that moment was the fact that no Carolina football player had received that award since legendary linebacker Lawrence Taylor in 1980.
Even in early December, the state’s sports spotlight remained on the gridiron version of the Tar Heels to a significant degree. While coach Hubert Davis’ UNC basketball team was struggling to an alarming 6-4 start, and quickly falling out of the Top 25 after a preseason No. 1 ranking, coach Mack Brown’s highly entertaining football squad was ranked No. 23 nationally as it lined up against No. 9 Clemson in the ACC championship game.
Although Carolina lost to Clemson in Charlotte, falling one game short of what would have been the Tar Heels’ first ACC gridiron title since 1980, Brown once again proved — just as he had in the 1990s — that it was at least possible for college football to remain prominent in North Carolina’s sports headlines into the final month of the calendar year.
Such a scenario seems increasingly unlikely, for any of North Carolina’s seven Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, here in 2024.
Although Duke is off to its first 5-0 start in football since 1994, the calendar’s recent turn from September to October had a lot of sports fans in the Tar Heel State asking a very familiar question a bit earlier than usual this year:
How long until basketball season? Answer: not long.
Next week in Charlotte, at the annual ACC Basketball Tipoff media event (Oct. 8-10), UNC will be represented by Davis, All-American guard RJ Davis and high-flying junior Seth Trimble, who was one of the league’s leading vote-getters for Sixth Man of the Year last season.
Later in the week, on Oct. 13, the basketball Tar Heels will play their annual Blue-White Scrimmage, with an unusual twist this time. The game is scheduled to be played at Harrah’s Resort in Cherokee, N.C., although that area of the state (west of Asheville) remains in recovery mode after the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene.
Then UNC heads to Memphis for a nationally televised Oct. 15 exhibition game against the Tigers at FedEx Forum. The Tar Heels have one more exhibition game, against Johnson C. Smith at the Smith Center on Oct. 27, before opening regular-season play with a home contest against Elon on Nov. 4.
Will any in-state football team still have a season worth following by that point?
It’s possible, especially at Duke, perhaps, given the Blue Devils’ hot start, but everyone else seems to be running out of time.
Duke (5-0): Credit to first-year coach Manny Diaz, who has the Blue Devils off to their first 5-0 start since 1994 and playing with the sort of confidence and perseverance that enabled them to turn the tables on UNC in the second half of their rivalry matchup at Wallace Wade Stadium last Saturday.
Now it will be interesting to see whether the 2024 Devils can avoid the ultimate fate of those 1994 Devils, who stumbled to a 3-4 mark down the stretch to finish just 8-4 after their scintillating start. Largely because of the universal skepticism about the quality of its first five opponents (Elon, Northwestern, UConn, Middle Tennessee State, UNC), this year’s Duke squad remains unranked and is an underdog at 3-2 Georgia Tech on Saturday.
UNC (3-2): The Tar Heels could resuscitate their season with a homecoming victory over 4-0 Pittsburgh on Saturday (noon, ESPN2), in part because UNC’s remaining schedule offers plenty of very beatable opponents.
However, the details behind the Heels’ back-to-back losses to James Madison and Duke would test any team’s mettle. Carolina gave up a program-worst 70 points to JMU (a Group of Five opponent) at Kenan Stadium, where tens of thousands of fans headed for the exits before halftime. Last week, after leading Duke 20-0 midway through the third quarter, the Heels fell 21-20 in a game that marked the second-biggest comeback victory in the history of Duke football.
NC State (3-2): Two of the most dominating defeats of the entire 12-year Dave Doeren Era in Raleigh happened earlier this season.
In a made-for-TV matchup in Charlotte, with Wolfpack Nation helping to fill the stands at Bank of America Stadium, No. 14 Tennessee absolutely annihilated NC State, 51-10, and held the Pack without an offensive touchdown. Two weeks later, No. 21 Clemson humiliated State at Death Valley. The Tigers led 45-7 at halftime before playing their reserves in a 59-35 blowout.
Appalachian State (2-2): Embarrassment has been an unfortunate theme for App State, too.
At Death Valley, Clemson scored touchdowns on its first eight offensive possessions and led 56-13 at halftime on its way to a 66-20 victory over the Mountaineers, More recently, when facing an opportunity to showcase the fantastic game-day atmosphere in Boone in an exclusive Thursday night television window on ESPN, App State played horribly on both sides of the ball and fell 48-14 to South Alabama.
East Carolina (3-2): Like the Mountaineers, the Pirates play at a football-first school, so their fan base typically is in no rush to turn the page to basketball.
Even after a dismal 2-10 campaign a year ago, ECU has a legitimate chance to make its mark in the American Athletic Conference in the long run, especially with that league’s recent losses of Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston to the Big 12 and SMU to the ACC. This year, though, simply getting to a bowl game appears to be the more reasonable goal in Greenville.
Wake Forest (1-3): A victory at NC State on Saturday would put some life back into the Demon Deacons’ season — Wake has won 10 of its last 20 matchups against the Wolfpack — but to this point the team’s only win is over North Carolina A&T, a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) opponent.
The Deacons’ recent three-game homestand proved to be deflating, with consecutive losses to Virginia (31-30), #6 Ole Miss (40-6) and Louisiana (41-38).
Charlotte (2-3): This is only the 49ers’ 10th season as an FBS program, and their first as a member of the American Athletic Conference.
Charlotte has made only one postseason appearance in its relatively brief history, making it especially difficult to attract attention in North Carolina’s largest city, which also hosts the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer, among other sports teams.
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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